Fanboxes - considered evil, please move on.

The time is nigh, the tipping point will occur soon when social media will create more link bait and spam than actual content.  This is starting to be seen on Twitter quite a lot now, pointless retweets from bots, follows from bots and now the hacked account direct message fiasco..... we've given an inch and the others have taken a mile.

The "fanbox" is something else that's a bit of a circle vulture as well.  It's a self serving tool for two sets of users.  Firstly the likes of the issuing site (Facebook for example) who are wanting to drive traffic back to their wares to justify the advertising revenue costs.  Secondly are the "fans" themselves.  What I've noticed though is that these "fans" aren't really fans.  Most of the time these "fans" are desperate to be noticed to so they'll join anything to get noticed.  Fanboxes merely spread the thin veil of nonsense even further.

In our social media quest to be noticed users have wanting put their name to anything to be noticed.  Yes the power of social networking is great, mighty and all that but it's starting to water down to the point it's nearly a homoepathic treatment.  

And how to you truely measure the returns from these fanboxes anyway?  If someone adds you on a networking site it's never mentioned (most of the time) where the referral has come from.  No one I've come across anyone asking to link with me and leaving a note, "Hi, I saw your profile on the fans of solenoid relays, you seem like a cool kinda guy.  I'd like to add you to me network." 

Fanboxes only work if you truely are a fan in the first place.  I personally believe they don't create a lot of traffic to you or your brand.  Perhaps it's now time to take stock, think responsibly and see where all of this is going.  If it carries on this way social networking will be 1% useful and 99% useless.

 

Girls, Rock 'n' Roll & Design......

Unless your head is stuffed in a vat of marmite you may be aware that Build Conference is going on in Belfast today. I'm not at it.... no need for me to be at it, I'm not designery.

Andy McMillan just posted this on Twitter.

"Girls, Rock 'n Roll & Design" — Ryan Sims, describing the typical web designer lifestyle at #buildconf

Which now explains everything in webdesign to me. It's like being in the band, everyone wants to be the lead singer so they can be at the front, pull the chicks and get all the glory :) The real work comes from the rhythm section at the back, the bass player and the drummer (or programmers as I now know them) who just lock in, get on and don't make a fuss.

And for the record, 24 years of bass playing and the only people I got to wanted to talk about effects pedals and the strings I used (long shiny ones).

It all makes perfect sense to me now...... (yes it's all tongue and cheek).

Andy's put on a brilliant conference, well done mate.

The curse of the short url.

Microblogging (Twitter, Friend Feed et al) has lifted the status of link shortening to new heights. They're not new either, I remember friends putting together Make A Shorter Link which then got acquired by tinyurl.

Then it all went quiet for a while as we didn't really need url shorteners as the majority of the time the resulting links were just put in normal webpages.  The reason their popularity wasn't huge was the same problem I have with them now, acting as a gateway to another site without knowing where my destination is, well that's bad.

So, do short urls have a shelf life? Are they time based or a done deal and will remain pointing to that link forever?  There's nothing to stop one url becoming the link to something a little less savoury....

My other real concern is the way that some users going about publishing them, I know that says more about them than me.  If it's from a trusted contact then I'll more than likely have a look.  If there's no strap line to tell me what I'm clicking on then I won't touch it.  And, lastly, if it's from a complete stranger I just move on.